The Vietnam War myth

[JasonC]

Factual points in a sea of endlessly repeated left wing spin...

The American people didn't turn against the war, half the Democratic party did, and the American people turned against the Democratic party the instant that happened. The left got its perfect peacenik candidate in 1972 against their hated nemesis Nixon - and Nixon won in a landslide.

Nixon won 520 electoral votes. McGovern got 17. (The last was for Nixon but the elector - from Virginia - switched his mandated vote to the libertarian candidate). McGovern carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Full stop. Nixon won every other state, included McGovern's home state. He won over 60% of the popular vote, against 37% for McGovern. 18 million more Americans voted for Nixon than voted for McGovern. I guess the antiwar movement just wasn't as unpopular as the left tries to pretend.

In fact Nixon had already Vietnamized the war, as he had promised, brought most US ground forces home, and ended the draft. That was all the American people required or expected, and was more than enough to keep support for his Vietnam policies high. The left hated him, the press hated him, they reviled his successful bombing of the north, they reviled the American soldiers fighting the war, they reviled the country, in fact. But they were impotent and they lost. Until Watergate.

Next on NVA armor. The NVA had not 600 AFVs of all kinds but 600 T-54, T-55, and Type 59 tanks, their Chinese equivalents. These were the heaviest in their arsenal and heavier than anything the Germans could dream of in Poland - improved IS-2s, pretty much. The NVA also had 400 PT-76s, "light" tanks by 1975 standards but as heavy as anything the Germans had in Poland. The NVA also had 400 APCs, most MG armed Chinese K-63s. They had smaller numbers of T-34/85s (mostly used for training), BTR-50s, BTR-60s, and a handful of ZSUs. After the fall of Da Nang during the campaign they also used captured M113s.

The NVA lost 400 AFVs in the *1972* offensive. They were replaced by the Russians in 1973. They *had* 400 AFVs in the final assault on Saigon alone, when most of their armor was still strung out across the country. They had 4 armor brigades (upgraded regiments) of 5 battalions each, 5 other armored regiments, and 29 armor battalions.

If the German armor force of 1939 had faced that of the NVA of 1975 on the battlefield, the Germans would have had their clocks cleaned. No contest, not even close, would not have the slightest prayer. South Vietnam was not lost to internal dissession or unpopularity at home or in the US, it was not lost to guerilla anything. It was conquered from abroad in a conventional military invasion by armored columns down the main highways attacking the major cities in succession, advancing 30 miles a day. 1939 or 1940 style blitzkrieg by a hostile tyranny.

And the men who worked night and day to get that to happen, and pretended it was anything but direct foreign aggression by a hostile tyranny to excuse themselves from doing anything about it (in fact for advancing its occurring as far as they could), will lie until the worms eat them, and the dirt the worms void will go on lying about all of it for another century or so.

But the blood of the abandoned ARVN is not impressed and is not silenced, and the bastards can rot in hell for it.